Tag Archives: Video SEO

RSS is the future for content discovery. This is even more important when the “content” is not textual so it is not easily indexed by crawlers. Video RSS and MRSS feeds are a great way to distribute and share your videos to communities to increase your embeds and visibility for your video:

iTunes: Formed by the merger of PureVideo Networks, Inc., publisher of GrindTV, the action sports channel on Yahoo! Sports, and Wasserman Media Group’s Sportnet. Each month, the combined company’s ten enthusiast media brands attract 8 million plus online visits generating more than 60 million video views across a syndication network that includes Yahoo!, MSN and Comcast, and other premium distributors.

You can submit a number of differing types of files to iTunes. The Submit Rss on the specs page has all the details you need

Blinkx: Has over 35 Million hrs. of video in the search index and Users can create personal video playlists, or build a customized Video Wallfor their blog or MySpace page.

ClipBlast: Founded in 2004 with patent-pending technologies designed to organize and simplify the “Video Web” helping users to search, navigate, watch and personalize their experience. Video Content Providers can monetize and distribute videos using a number of tools on the platform.

Truveo:Operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Inc with a comprehensive and innovative set of developer tools used by content producers in Truveo’s Director Account program to make their video searchable by the millions of users across the Truveo network. Additionally website developers have leveraged Truveo’s Open APIs to enhance their website.

Grind Networks: Formed by the merger of PureVideo Networks, Inc., publisher of GrindTV, the action sports channel on Yahoo! Sports, and Wasserman Media Group’s Sportnet. Each month, the combined company’s ten enthusiast media brands attract 8 million plus online visits generating more than 60 million video views across a syndication network that includes Yahoo!, MSN and Comcast, and other premium distributors.

World Wide Broadcast Network: Platform System uses a robust and scalable infrastructure designed for delivering rich media. WWBN.com enables any object in your digital media library to be instantly delivered and monetized while creating an unparalleled online experience for users.

Blip.tv: The Dashboard shows you exactly where your audience is, and increasingly who they are. Track audience and user engagement graphs to determine where the user fast forwards, where they rewind, and where you lose them. This enables you to improve your video and consequently YouTube and Google rankings since there is indications this engagement is part off the ranking algo.

When you upload to BlipTV, your videos can be syndicated to accounts you have on other Web sites such as blogs, iTunes , Yahoo Video, AOL Video, MySpace, FaceBook, and Feedburner.

The blip.tv distribution network reaches more than 80% of Americans on the Internet and a growing number of television households. Partners like YouTube, NBC, Apple, TiVo and AOL help blip.tv shows find their total potential audiences

You can still watch and share high-quality DivX® video in your browser using DivX Web Player. Anyone with a website or blog can easily embed DivX video. And remember, you can enjoy your DivX video almost anywhere — on your computer, your phone and on your TV. Unfortunately the cost to run the upload site was prohibitive.

Twitter for video traffic tops facebook yahoo google and bing TubeMogul provides some recent data showing video is a favorite share among Twitter users. Some of this is via favorited vids being tweeted. I likely do about 40-50 Grooveshark tweets a week… it is music but … I think it’s safe to say it is similar behavior!

Recent statistics by TubeMogul are showing a high increase in people using Twitter instead of its competitors Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Bing. According to Mashable, social media users are tending to steer towards Twitter as it not only gives them the option of watching videos but connecting them to real-world friends and not just their own interests.

The other day in the SEO Training Dojo chat I was asked about the role of linking and videos. Personally, I believe that embeds are the new link. They are easier to determine quality based on reactive engagement (comments, ratings, subs, friends and how much of the video was watched [attention]) making distribution and promotion of the video almost as important as what is in the video.

What is significant about the software and sites below are they are mass distributors, sometimes paid and some extremely powerful programs uploading videos combined with social bookmarking and sharing sites and communities. With the “buzz factor” from this activity likely a factor in getting Videos into Universal SERPs with Video, RealTime search and possibly.

HeySpread : Some services are paid but it doesn’t seem that they are very expensive. An online tool to send videos to multiple sites, with some interesting, reasonably priced services and an API based on REST with PHP and Ruby libraries available

TrafficGeyser: Distribute video to a large number of video search engines, sharing sites and social bookmarking sites. It’s a comprehensive service offering slidecasting, royalty-free music packs, video-to-audio conversion and broadcasting to podcast directories and social bookmarking sites. Site treats information about the products like they are an old school affiliate program. Highly recommended by a number of users I met in Dan Thies Link Liberator seminars. I highly recommend submitting the lead form for the excellent info and info about the company. Yeah I wasn’t happy but they at least gave me info for upping my email… I pity them if they spam me!

I will not be surprised to see Video replace pictures in the News Paks in the near future. This is a prediction as I do not know for sure but the recent Google news bog post Making your video news more accessible seems to indicate interest in adding video to the News Pak and Google news listings.

Video Promotion and Video Syndication Site Considerations

Note that while I was going through these syndicators and sharing sites there were more but all were in varying degrees of going out of business. At least one had multiple services with low monthly prices. The problem here was clearly unrealistic pricing which should alerted us to the potential for the demise of free and freemium services. It is devastating to have invested into a community and have the community close. Keep this in mind as you build out your video syndication and sharing strategy.

Conclusions on Video Promotion

Video production and optimization are the foundation of your Universal SERPs video strategy. Promotion and engagement are the drivers of the viral video bus increasing brand visibility and and links.

effective Youtube video ad campaign

Facebook is the go-to social network for social advertisers, and the site has certainly proved it’s value in returning good results and awareness for brands. Youtube is a less obvious choice for many marketers, yet it’s an excellent platform for running social video ads and can prove to be cost-effective while delivering real business results. Many businesses of course, will be put off by Youtube as they may not have the necessary video assets to fully capitalise on this, but Youtube’s promoted video option is something that brands should focus on and you don’t necessarily need to invest in full-scale video production, if you have a clear strategy in place to make the content work for you.

The audience

To provide some context on how Youtube advertising can work, the video below shows the impressive figures behind Youtube homepage takeovers. While this is a much more significant advertising undertaking for brands than a standard promoted video campaign, the figures show how engaged audiences are on Youtube. Google and Compete recently ran a report into the effectiveness of Facebook ads, with some surprising results. Given that the ad report was commissioned by Google, these findings are of course skewed towards the positive, but they are useful nonetheless.

SAY HELLO TO VSEO ( Video Search Engine Optimization)

VSEO or Video Search Engine Optimization is revolutionary Turn that can take companies’ video and spread it over the far reaches of the Internet, and then make it easy to find in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and more.

Streaming videos from YouTube, interactive websites like blogs, and more have forced companies to evolve at the speed of light.

Video optimization has emerged as one of the latest SEO techniques which have taken the SEO world with a stride. Earlier this technique was discarded by many SEO’s as they thought it wasn’t too effective and not catchy with the audience. However, they are now proved wrong as the majority of SEO’s use YouTube optimization techniques for getting top ranking.

Channel & Watch Page Views - Share in other social channels. Engage your community and seek to build it! Feature the video on your channel page.

Advertise in Promoted Videos, Facebook, Stumble Upon and much more Try TUBE MOGUL to upload in several video portals

Engagement (Comments, Thumbs Up/Down, Favorites) - The easiest way to boost engagement is to actually be a part of the community. Give and you shall receive. Remember, users must be logged in to their account in order to engage with posted content.

A user who finds your video from a Facebook embed will be less likely to comment, rate or favorite your video than a logged in user who found your video in. One last tip: always allow comments. If you’re concerned of what users will say, set the video to allow comments after approval.

Annotations – If you have several videos, use annotations to link them together. Use annotations for calls to action as well.

Links & Embeds – A diverse set of links and embeds: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Vimeo, Website, Blogs, etc. You never know– any given account user could also be a very active member of a forum that could potentially drive tens of thousands of views to your video.

Subscribers – Users often subscribe to Video users who regularly post content and are active in the community. There are benefits to having both types of connections.

HTML5 continues to grow and gain adoption across the web, as many marketers have discovered the advantage of HTML5 to extend video to a wide range of platforms (as mentioned in my April 22 post, Are You Ready for the New iPad Era with HTML5?). According to TechCrunch, nearly two-thirds of web video is already encoded for HTML5. As HTML5 keeps evolving, many limitations continue to be overcome. One of HTML5’s biggest benefits for marketers is its native video support. HTML5 videos can be built directly into supporting browsers, which enables publishers to deliver full-motion, high-quality video faster. There are also direct video SEO benefits.

HTML5 improves search engines’ understanding of the structure and content of a video and provides greater accessibility. HTML tags like the “section” tag, which enables marketers to explain the topic of page sections, and the “nav” tag, by which a mobile device browser can make a link, help search engines more accurately categorize content and links.

Similarly, simple browser coding makes HTML5 videos more searchable and indexable. At the Google I/O conference on May 19, Google announced it was joining with other web companies in launching webM, an open web media format project, and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec the company will contribute to the project under a royalty-free license.

According to webM, VP8 delivers high-quality video while efficiently adapting to the varying processing and bandwidth conditions found on today’s broad range of web-connected devices. VP8’s efficient bandwidth usage aims to deliver lower servicing costs for content publishers and high-quality video for end users. The codec’s relative simplicity makes it easy to integrate into existing environments and requires less manual tuning to produce high-quality results. These existing attributes and the rapid innovation expected through the open development process make VP8 well suited for the unique requirements of video on the web. With VP8 and other codecs that can be supported by an HTML5 player, marketers can assure their content will be viewable on virtually any platform, from iPads to Smartphone devices to web browsers.

So why should marketers embrace HTML5? A better question might be “why shouldn’t they?” given the many benefits offered by embracing the technology. Let’s consider a couple of advantages demonstrated during the Google I/O conference by Sports Illustrated editor Terry McDonell.

McDonell unveiled a magazine application in development that featured HTML5 video running within a frame of text. The visual capabilities alone are impressive, but the Sports Illustrated project also demonstrates how HTML5 enables more web-friendly graphics and greater interactivity. The video also illustrates how HTML5 video ads can provide a more dynamic user experience.

As McDonell says, “the advertising can be so good in this context that it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products and when you’ve made your decision, it can help you find the place to buy them,” as seen with the WonderFlex L300. Rich video runs seamlessly with text, which broadens the possibilities for the creativity of “print” ads, combined with the accountability of online media. The format of HTML5 provides instantaneous playback on all-access video and low power consumption, while drag-and-drop capabilities enable users to customize their experience. The search capabilities showcased within the Sports Illustrated video also give users more access to videos from multiple sources.

To effectively move toward implementing HTML5, marketers should determine whether their videos are ready for the platform and choose the appropriate codec. Google has built enough momentum for VP8 by simultaneously announcing support in most browsers and by most companies that the format can’t be ignored. Marketers should also be sure to design videos with enhanced content in mind. Using the appropriate tags ensure that videos get properly indexed and stay searchable. Tying in all relevant content to the video subject matter, like related articles or photos, will help make the video content more interactive and customizable, as seen in the Sports Illustrated video. Enabling social media capabilities will also allow users to share content, thereby further exposing the content to more users and additional screens. Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind some standard SEO video best practices like including optimized text, page titles and descriptions in any HTML5 video object.

Considering the growing prevalence of HTML5 and the accessibility it provides, it’s important for marketers to adapt to this evolving video format and take advantage of the new capabilities in order to keep up with competitors and stay visible with their audience. By serving consumers at every possible touchpoint through the adoption of HTML5, marketers can ensure that they stay accessible and engage consumers on every available screen.

As most search engine optimization (SEO) experts are aware, getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever. Not only do Google’s search and indexing algorithms continue to evolve in complexity, but Google has given over more and more of its search results real estate to “blended” search results, displaying videos and images towards the top of the first page, and pushing down—and sometimes off the page—traditional web results that would have otherwise competed for top rankings.

But where problems arise, so do opportunities. Although Google’s newfound enthusiasm for video has created more competition for fewer traditional search results, it has enabled sites with video assets—even sites that would otherwise score poorly in the Google index—to successfully achieve first-page rankings. In fact, Forrester Research found that videos were 53 times more likely than traditional web pages to receive an organic first-page ranking.

Those images at the top of the search results are video thumbnails, and today, there’s only two ways to get there:

1. Upload your video to YouTube.

The advantage of this is that you are 100% certain to be indexed into Google’s search engine. This does not guarantee you’ll get a first-page result, but at least it ensures that Google knows your content exists.

The drawback, of course, is that anyone who clicks on a YouTube result will be taken to YouTube, which may be fine if your goal is branding (i.e., you only care that people watch your video). If your goal is driving traffic, as is typically the case with SEO, this won’t be a successful strategy.

Google is fairly flexible in what it considers to be video content. You can use actual video footage, but screen captures, slide shows, animated PowerPoint slides, and other content will work just as well. Google can’t actually “see” what’s inside the video content, so it relies on title and other meta-data to determine what content your video actually contains.

Submission, Not Discovery

With traditional web pages, Google utilizes crawlers to discover and index web content. Unfortunately, Google can’t read Flash very well (although it is trying), and as a result, most video content is invisible to Google’s search crawlers. Therefore, the best way to appear in Google’s blended search results is to submit your video to Google using a Video Sitemap. This is similar to an XML sitemap, but is formatted specifically for video, and only contains information about your video content. It is submitted using Google’s Webmaster Tools.

The most common error in Video SEO is to assume that because you have submitted the web page on which a video resides, that the video content itself is being indexed.

You’ll also need to make sure that you have a robots.txt file on all video pages, to ensure that Google can easily verify that the locations on the Web you’ve submitted do in fact exist, and that they contain embed codes which indicate the presence of a video.

Title and Title Tags

When ranking videos, Google primarily considers the match between search keywords and the video title. Although Google allows you to submit other meta-data such as description and keywords, these currently don’t have much influence on your search ranking. Google likes it when the title tag of the page matches the title of the video, and will give a higher weighting for results where this is the case.

Video SEO is Long Tail

Like traditional SEO, you’re much more likely to see results with Video SEO if you target more specific, or longer tail, search terms. A video titled “Dog” is unlikely to produce a first-page ranking, while a video titled “German Shepherd Police Dog” will be more likely to score well in Google’s algorithm. Since Google can’t determine the actual content of the video, you might consider submitting the same video multiple times with different titles that match potential search terms.

New and Small Don’t Matter

With traditional SEO, the age of a website is an important consideration for Google in deciding its ranking. Google also considers things like the number of pages on the site, and the number of links to the site, along with the importance of the places those links originate.

In Video SEO, none of this matters. This means that even new sites and small sites can compete on equal footing with larger and more established players. Publishers who are too small or too new to even consider traditional SEO can still be taking advantage of Video SEO opportunities.

For the Foreseeable Future, Video SEO is a Winning Strategy

As time goes by, Google’s discovery and indexing of video content will no doubt become more sophisticated, and as competition for video results increases, it will become harder for sites to achieve these first-page rankings. However, the number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO.